Somali Gov't to Meet With Opposition
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan said Saturday that his fledgling government will hold talks with opposition leaders in an attempt to bring them into his transitional administration.
Abdiqasim said the talks between government officials and members of an alliance of faction leaders known as the Somali Reconciliation and Reconstruction Council, or SRRC, will be held in a neighboring country ``very soon.''
``Hopefully the result will be something satisfactory for all ... (and) will lead to an administration where all of us participate,'' Abdiqasim said while opening a court in Mogadishu.
Factions still control much of this Horn of Africa nation of 7 million, and Abdiqasim's cash-strapped government has little influence outside of the capital, Mogadishu.
Abdiqasim and 245 legislators were elected at a peace conference in neighboring Djibouti in August 2000. Somalia previously had not had a central government since 1991, when opposition leaders joined forces to oust dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Abdiqasim did not say Saturday in which country the talks would take place, but faction leaders said the meeting would be in Kenya.
Hassan Mohamed Nur, leader of the faction that controls much of the central regions of Bay and Bakol, said he and other members of the SRRC had received invitations to the talks from the Kenyan government.
The SRRC had agreed to meet ``any side without putting forward any preconditions,'' Nur said, adding that he will be leaving Somalia for Kenya on Oct. 31.
However, another member of the SRRC, Musa Sude Yalahow, one of three Mogadishu-based faction leaders opposed to the government and whose fighters have been active in the past few months, said he would not attend.
``Nothing will come out of the Kenyan initiative,'' he said.
Originally published October 27, 2001.
